


Aviary

by ScienceofObsession



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ducks, Gen, Reunion Fic, of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 11:34:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScienceofObsession/pseuds/ScienceofObsession
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We fill the holes however we can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aviary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aderyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/gifts).



> For the lovely Aderyn, on her birthday. For all those duck photos that bring me a smile. <3

John has friends, has something he’d found to replace his lost Sherlock. They’re feathered and earnest, tucked away in a sad little corner of the boating lake in Regents Park. They swarm his feet on approach, soft grunts and quacks and honks a verbal demonstration that creases his eyes.

“When it froze hard, that winter you were gone…” he swallows. “Nobody fed them, they wouldn’t leave. So I started coming. I couldn’t just…”

Sherlock stills, crouched low and surveying. Round black eyes follow his twitch of finger as the seed lays in his palm. He feels a bit of poison apple in the back of his throat.

“Watch out for that grey one, he’ll bite if you’re not careful.”

John won’t say,  _he reminds me of you._

There’s a glint in his eye as he walks among them, his voice low with this murmured avian tongue.  _Thomas, Matilda, Pops, that’s it girl, come on, Duke, there you go, Sunny…_

Sherlock, never one for pets, finds the attraction odd. He expects a bit of Richard Attenborough to descend from the greying sky. He takes one look at John, swallows a dismissive comment and reminds himself: peacekeeper.

His shoes squish in the putrid mud; John trails his fingers along glistening feathered shoulders.

“I always had a feeling…” John starts. He looks up with defiant eyes. “Broken wing display.”

When they leave, Sherlock has a black messenger pressed between his fingers. Man, it would seem, is no more clever than a threatened bird.

…  
  
John wakes to a feather on his pillow.

**Author's Note:**

> It was like a lightbulb when I read it... 
> 
> **Broken Wing Display** \- Distraction displays are anti-predator behaviours used to attract the attention of an enemy away from an object, typically the nest or young, that is being protected. Injury feigning is one of the more common forms of distraction. The broken-wing display is particularly well-known in nesting waders and plovers and doves such as the Mourning Dove. Birds that are at the nest walk away from the nest with one wing hung low and dragging on the ground so as to appear as an easy target for a predator.


End file.
